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Prepare to act

It’s a bit funny that this is a ‘chapter’ in the book. And a whole page and a half, it’s more a segue from discussing perception to action. Because it’s so short, long excerpts would mean basically writing the whole chapter up.

Here’s the core message:

The demand on you is this: once you see the world as it is, for what it is, you must act. The proper perception–objective, rational, ambitious, clean–isolates the obstacle and exposes it for what it is.

And, that makes sense. After all, what good is seeing things for how they are if it just makes you apathetic.

I think what I like about Stoicism is that it requires action. We (I mean ‘I’) imagine a stoic person as a person who just sits there and takes whatever life dishes out, uncomplainingly. But, who needs a philosophy that reduces to “shut up and take it”?

Instead, a philosophy of “accept things for how they are, and then look at what you can do and do it.

When I’m rationalizing it in my own head, it’s like sitting down to card game every day and saying “what can I do to improve the cards I get tomorrow? Is it worth it? How can I play these cards to make the most out of today?” And then figuring out what needs to be done and doing it.